The Medieval site of Oursi hu-beero was discovered in the course of the SFB regional survey by an interdisciplinary team of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, and the University of Ouagadougou. The complex is located in northern Burkina Faso in the middle of a number of settlement mounds. Principal topographic features of this area are a number of sand dunes that traverse east west through the Sahelian landscape of West Africa.

They hold a remarkable array of prehistoric and historic sites that leads the researcher to assume a sort of preference for this zone in antiquity. Also Oursi hu-beero is located on such a dune ridge from which the visitor has a beautiful view over the modern Songhay village of Oursi and the fairly wide inland lake behind it.

Besides the sedentary population of contemporary Oursi, Fulani and Kal Tamashaq (Tuareg) pastoralists graze their flocks at the "mare d'Oursi" throughout the year.